Nitehawks battle Leafs for top spot in Neil Murdoch division

If you can tear yourself away from the tube this weekend there are some interesting hockey games on tap locally.

Beaver Valley, in the midst of a malaise of sorts mostly due to injuries, has a must-win kind of weekend set with first place Nelson in KIJHL action. The second of the home and home battle with the first place Leafs goes Saturday night at the Hawks’ Nest and I am confident it will be a spirited affair. Hockey fans should enjoy it.

Friday the Smoke Eaters, whose malaise is season long, have a last place battle with the Chilliwack Chiefs, who have had problems aplenty of their own. What might make the game fun, besides the fact Smokie games have been off and on highly entertaining of late, is that both clubs have been scoring a fair amount lately. That improved scoring hasn’t translated into standings point for either squad, but there is cheering involved just the same.

Trail needs to win to have a chance of avoiding a dead last place finish in the league and both teams are full of young hopefuls busting their butts for a roster spot on what they hope will much more competitive squads next season.

It’s true, Trail has scored the fewest goals and given up the most in the league, and Chilliwack has the third fewest scores and second most goals allowed, but that should mean it will be a highly competitive contest, and therefore entertaing and worth attending.

While you are at these games and enjoying all that youthfull enthusiasm, grab some 50-50 tickets. I finally, after tens of thousands of dollars worth of trying all over Canada, found out it is quite enjoyable to win one of those – and it is a direct way to support the teams in any case.

• The two local guys, Dean Horning and Don Freschi, were still alive at last look, playing the B quarter-final at the men’s provincial curling championship at the former Olympic playdown site at Little Mountain in Vancouver.

Remember when curling honchos were justifying the extreme expense of building a new curling facility in an area, like this one, that was already overserved by such facilities?

“It will be world class,” they said. “People will come from all over the world to learn and compete here,” they said. “We will be the envy of the curling world,” they said.

Just over a year after VanWhistler ended, the Vancouver Curling Club, just another of the many curling clubs in B.C – with few illusions of world class grandeur – moved into the facility.

The club is hosting the first (moderately) big time event at the rink since 2010 this week – not really fitting in with the grandiose visions we were sold by such as Linda Moore back in the day – and seems to be one of the, “legacy,” buidlings that the normal people left behind when the stars left the city four years ago this month can make use of.

It was way overpriced for its value, of course, and is part of a complex that receives city subsidies, but at least it is getting its intended use by a scant few of the people who paid for it.

Socchi”s citizens should be so lucky. The world bank has already warned that city faces an Athens-like fate (which was no small part of the Greek economy cratering) when the current Games are done.`